The Haircut
by Sisterdebmac
Summary: Late in the Summer of 2005, a new, rather drastic haircut presents an opportunity for Joan and Adam to talk about the important things. Author's note: This is my first attempt at JOA fic, so be nice.


**The Haircut**

_by_

_Sisterdebmac_

_Late in the Summer of 2005, a new, rather drastic haircut presents an opportunity for Joan and Adam to talk about the important things._

_Author's note: This is my first attempt at JOA fic, so be nice. Thanks ever so to TeeJay for editing and additional material. And bless her heart for the exhaustive research she undertook to help me get my facts straight in pursuit of this little ficlet. Also, I must acknowledge Tote's fic, "Beautiful Thing", which I borrowed from to explain what actually happened with Adam and Bonnie. _

_Disclaimer: They're not mine...blah blah blah. Barbara Hall...blah blah blah. CBS...blah blah blah._

_Rating: Borderline PG13/R for graphic sexual language_

_Genre: a little angst, a little romance, and a whole lotta talk._

Joan drummed her fingers on the bookstore counter at irregular intervals as if she was drumming along to an inaudible tune. Could this afternoon be any more boring? How could she have been stupid enough to say yes when Sammy called her and asked if she could come in for an extra shift today? A perfect summer afternoon, the sun high in the sky, and she was here, waiting for the rare occurrence of an actual customer having found his or her way here looking for something, or looking just to hang out and hide their nose in a book.

She suddenly itched with the desire to go outside and just stand in the sun, to feel its warmth on her skin. But instead she was stuck among the books and paperwork. She didn't even look up when she heard the bell on the door jingle. It was just going to be another extremely boring customer to intrude on her extremely boring inventory report.

When she did finally give in and look, she had to blink twice before she could believe her eyes. Everything about him looked familiar—except there was something new, something surprisingly _un_familiar.

"Wow, Adam, you're all... your hair's... gone," she said as she took in the sight of her normally shaggy-haired ex.

"Yeah." He scrunched his face up and ran a hand through his fresh coif self-consciously. "Too weird?"

"Actually, no. You look... great," she told him sincerely.

He gave her a skeptical shrug.

"Handsome," she said, feeling a little self-conscious herself for thinking so. But she still managed a smile.

A smile that forced him to look away. He touched the back of the new cut again, relieved.

"You came here to show me?"

"Kinda," he nodded. Busted and embarrassed to still be so dependent on her approval, he realized he had wanted desperately to show her. He wasn't exactly sure why, but he knew he'd feel naked and weird about it unless she didn't hate it --- like he sometimes did about trying something new with his art.

It was a good cut. It brought out his eyes and those amazing eyebrows. Even so, she was more than a little sad to see his luscious curly mane gone, even if it had been getting far too long of late. She remembered how much trouble she had sometimes keeping her hands out of it. But those days were past now, right? What did it the length of his hair mean to her anymore? Still, she heard herself say, "What possessed you to do this?"

"New job, yo. Also, I'm going to a wedding in Philadelphia with my dad. He got a haircut, too."

"Your dad? No way." Joan raised her eyebrows in surprise.

"Cha. My aunt Louisa's marrying some rich dude, having this big, fancy wedding."

She tried to imagine that. She'd never seen Carl Rove looking anything less than, well, scruffy.

"Dad even rented us tuxes. Can you believe that?"

She could not help smiling to herself a little at the thought. "You in a tux. I'd like to see that."

Again with the skepticism, he said, "You're makin' fun of me, Jane."

"No, I'm really not. Trust me."

"Sure," he shrugged as he walked off to the side, pretending to be distracted by a book. "Whatever..." If she wasn't making fun, then what? He put the question aside for the moment. "My dad's pretty psyched about the whole thing. He said it's about time somebody in the family marries into money."

"I bet the food is gonna be great. Too bad the wedding's not here."

"Yeah, you could go as my date," he blurted and then realized what he had said. "Not a... date, you know, but..."

She waved off his concern at the blurt as she actually considered the offer. "Adam, friends go as dates to weddings all the time. I'd go. If it was in town."

"You could still totally go. We're driving up," he said before his momentary lapse of reason caught up with him. "You know, if you wanted to and you... actually could."

"There's gonna be a big reception, right? So you'll be staying overnight," Joan assumed.

"Yeah."

"You, me and overnight cause all kinds of trouble. I think we've had enough trouble for a while."

Well, that was certainly true. He nodded for her benefit, but he wondered if she was actually afraid something troublesome could possibly happen if they went. As friends, of course.

"Besides," she half-snorted, "How could I even be considering this? I'm still supposed to be mad at you." She said it like it was a question, like she wasn't sure if she was. Or should be.

"Right." If she was still _supposed_ to be mad at him, did that mean there was chance...? "Are you?"

"Yeah," Joan said with little real conviction. But was she? She knew there was still that quiet seething, ever present in the back of her mind, but she was so tired of being mad at him, of having to remind herself that he hurt her, worse than anyone ever had in her life.

Adam lifted his head to seek out Joan's eyes, to see if she really meant it. But he couldn't tell because she looked away, studied the paperwork that was lying on the counter in front of her. She said she was still mad. He figured as much. He uttered a simple, "OK."

The silence grew awkward and Adam looked for something to distract himself from the fact that he had just brought up the bad memories again. For lack of anything else to do, he picked up the book he was pretending to study.

But Joan surprised him and said, "And yet I'm standing here imagining you in a tuxedo."

That didn't only surprise him, it confused him. He briefly wrinkled his forehead. "So what do you think that means?" he whispered as he nervously thumbed at the pages of the book in his hands.

"Means I'm human. Means I still look at you sometimes... and..."

The book-thumbing stopped cold. Was she saying...? Their eyes locked. "Yeah, me too," he gulped out.

"You know, sometimes, before the disgust sets in..." Joan quietly added.

_Oh_, he thought. _There it is._

"Sometimes, I remember how it was with you," she continued, "when it was good. For the longest time, when we touched, even before we were really together, there was something..." she stopped, unable to complete her thought.

She couldn't imagine why she was saying these things. The bad memories started mingling with the good and she couldn't go on. Not when all she could think of was that wretched wound that refused to heal. "You... you were different the last, I don't know, month or so we were together," she mused out loud as the bad gained a secure foothold in her mind again. "You were like hot and cold. What was that? Were you sneaking around that long?"

"No!" He tossed the book onto the counter. _Dammit! See what you've started?_ He screamed inside. "No. It--- No."

"So, then what was wrong?" she asked him boldly. She had always wanted to know what was really going on with him in all this, but he could never give a straight answer. And she could never reconcile his feeble excuses with the way they made her feel.

He turned away from her and leaned back onto the counter. There was so much he wanted her to understand about why things went the way they did. He was sure she never would though, and that defeat threatened to silence him again. "I don't know how to put it into words," he offered and he knew how pathetic it sounded.

There it was again. She was so utterly sick of that answer. She stepped around the counter to face him, trying to meet his eyes as she addressed him. "Adam, don't tell me one more time that you don't know why you did it. I can't hear that anymore. I refuse to believe that."

"OK." He looked at his shoes and then at the ceiling, searching for some place to begin to bring that horrible tangle of feelings inside him into language. When he turned his eyes back to Joan, he was taken with the way she studied him, quietly but expectantly waiting for him to finally make sense.

"Jane, I never wanted to be with anyone else but you. Being with you was pretty much all I ever thought about. You've seen my old sketchbooks." He paused for a moment and then went on, "That was part of the problem. It was all about you from the first time we had a real conversation. You're so..." _Watch the tense_, he reminded himself. "I looked in your eyes and I saw this... light. I never thought you'd like me and when you did, everything started to change. I felt like... hopeful. Even when we were just friends, even when we weren't..." _Damn the tense_, "I love you."

"Adam, don't." Joan's voice was weary. She didn't want to hear that. He had no right to say it anymore.

But instead of him backing down like a hurt puppy, as she expected, he said, "What? You want an explanation, right? I'm trying to give you one."

She crossed her arms over her chest and nodded a little. How had they opened this can of worms again? Oh yeah, with a little harmless flirting.

"I feel bad about what I did to Iris," he told her.

"Iris?" _What? Where the hell did that come from?_ Joan wondered.

"Yeah, it started there, I think. I did like her, but if I'm being honest, she was a substitute. I was always waiting for you." He gave her a longing look that forced her to have to try hard not to swallow as he went on, "I gave up so many times. And then you were there. And we were..." He let the sentence hang in the air.

"Yeah." Joan half whispered. He didn't have to say it. She knew.

"So I dropped her like a hot rock. And I never looked back." Adam bowed his head to absently study a clump of mud on the floor that some customer obviously tracked in. He pushed it around with the tip of his boot until he inadvertently crushed it to dust.

Joan looked up at him, wishing he'd meet her eyes. She hadn't given much thought to that before. She'd been so happy that he was finally hers. It rarely occurred to her that someone else had gotten hurt. It was too much to handle on top of everything else. "Well, you couldn't stay with her after we realized how we felt, could you?"

He shook his head sadly, still not looking at Joan. "Doesn't make it OK, though."

"It's high school. These things happen," she said in their defense.

"I guess lots of things happen."

"Yeah," she acknowledged quietly.

He couldn't help an ironic laugh as he said, "It totally sucks. I mean, between this girl I was just marking time with and this one I felt nothing for, there was the one girl I really loved. And I couldn't hold on to her."

"Maybe you didn't love her enough."

"Don't say that, Jane." There was a quiet desperation in that plea. "Don't ever say that. I wish you knew..."

He seemed very stung by that accusation, but she often thought that it must be true.

"You know, I used to count our kisses."

"What?" She was incredulous, but undeniably delighted.

"Don't laugh. Maybe it sounds stupid but, you know, I waited so long for the first one... And the second one. After that, I couldn't help keeping track." He tapped a finger to his temple. "Eidetic memory... Also sense memory by that time."

Yeah, like the senses that were currently working overtime as she stood so close. He almost couldn't go on as he remembered. But she needed to hear it. And he needed to tell her how deeply torturous it all was. "God, Jane, every time I kissed you, every time I touched you, I was on fire... just going insane inside. It was amazing."

She was staggered when she realized that she knew exactly what he was saying. How many times had it been that way for her too? Having those feelings she knew she was not supposed to act on. Not when Mom and Dad and even God said she shouldn't. Not yet. "I remember," she whispered, looking down at the floor herself now, no longer wishing to meet his eyes and see the sadness she knew was there.

"I loved that feeling," he said very seriously.

"Me too," she replied, almost sighed.

"It was like being high or something at first."

"Yeah," she laughed a little. It was an accurate description. "We found our places to make out, didn't we?"

"And then we had the roof," he reminded her.

"Yeah, until that stupid janitor booted us." Joan had to smile slightly at the memory, even though they were really mad at the guy then.

He smiled too, suddenly overcome by the wish to hold her hands like he used to. He always loved holding her hands. And she must've loved it too because she used to like to kiss his hands sometimes. It made his knees tremble. Even now, as he merely conjured the feeling, it flooded back on him. He figured he might as well swim or drown so he made an admission to her that he hoped she would not take the wrong way. "Do you have any idea of the kind of dreams I had after that night you came to see me at the hotel?"

Joan felt a warm blush wash over her face, and then a smile. It wasn't embarrassment coloring her cheeks. It was something far more dangerous. Something she'd tried very hard to forget. "I... might've had a few of my own," she confessed.

"Right around there things started to get unbelievably complicated." There was regret in his voice, and a hint of weariness. Like he was wishing to go back and un-complicate things, do them over and fix them.

"You could say that," Joan replied, not knowing what else to say.

"And then you went away to that place." He brought it up. Crazy Camp, as Joan always called it. Or had called it. They didn't talk about that anymore. The truth was they didn't talk about all those big things that once seemed to matter so much, not anymore. But Joan didn't quite fall into sudden melancholy over those unpleasant memories, like Adam had expected.

Instead, she said, "Don't remind me. It'll get me started thinking about Judith. You know, she used to make jokes about what you were doing to... you know, take care of yourself in my absence."

Now it was his turn to blush. "Um, let's not go there, Jane."

"Good idea," Joan said knowingly.

"Why do you think I read all those books? It was my way of being close to you without thinking too much about how I wasn't close to you."

Joan now looked down, feeling slightly guilty. "And I shut you down."

"What?"

"When you tried to tell me that you believed me... you know, about God. I told you that Crazy Camp cured me of that particular delusion."

"It didn't?"

The question was simple enough, but the implications just hit Joan like a ton of bricks. She sighed. "That's another conversation for another time, maybe." She wished so many times that she could've accepted his belief --- when it finally came. But how could she when she was trying so very hard not to believe?

"Why do you always change the subject when it's about that?" Adam asked sounding a little fed up with her constant avoidance.

"Because for right now, I have to." She was painfully aware that that wasn't much of an explanation. That it wasn't one at all, and she silently prayed that Adam would accept it anyway. At least for the time being.

"This is part of the problem, too, you know. You keep this part of you all bottled up that nobody can touch. Not even the people you say you love. No matter how hard I tried to hold onto you, you were always slipping away into your secrets. You can only push people away for so long before they don't come back." It wasn't an accusation as much as a statement fact. Something he had wanted to say for a long time. He wasn't sure she ever understood how distant she felt to him sometimes.

"I pushed _you_ away?" Joan asked incredulously. "I think you've done your fair share of pushing, mister!"

Obviously, she didn't understand. Maybe now wasn't the best time to try to make his case. He took an unsure step away from her, sighing slightly. "I don't wanna fight anymore, Jane. That's not what I meant to say. I'm sorry. I'm trying to tell you that even though I acted like some dumb horny teenager, it's not what I meant and it's not how I felt in my heart and these days it's like my pecker's been snapped in two anyway."

"What?" She laughed.

"I think I've lost my interest in sex," he said off-handedly, like he was saying he was lactose intolerant or something.

"Now I know that's crap," Joan told him trying not to laugh at the ridiculousness of the idea.

"No, I'm serious. If I even think about it, I feel... guilty. And when I feel like that... nothing happens for me anymore."

"Good," she said impulsively and triumphantly. But was that really fair? She answered her own question. "No, Adam, I don't want you to feel like that... Not forever anyway."

He gave her a bit of a pained smile and she returned it without hesitation. That beautiful smile of hers. He couldn't believe he was standing not two feet from her, that too-familiar reproving look in her eyes now curiously absent. _What the hell is happening, and please, God, don't let it stop! _

He couldn't help what came next. He didn't care if he got slapped. Or kneed in his recessed balls. He closed the gap between them and he kissed her. She didn't resist. After a few nervous, delicious seconds, he jumped back, a little too suddenly. "Whoa. Uh... I'm sorry."

She covered her mouth with her hand ---a familiar gesture, but for a different reason. "That was..."

"Yeah..."

They spoke at the same time. He said, "A mistake." She said, "Hot."

Then they said, "What?" in unison. Neither of them could fight this thing anymore. They stared into each other's eyes for a flash and then crashed into each other's arms, and lips. For Adam, she was oxygen. For Joan, he was fire. For a moment, they were lost. She could feel him quicken and she did not push him away. There was no fear in either of them for the consequences. There was only hunger. And an aching need to reconnect. In that gloriously electric moment, Joan's anger melted to nothing. There was no thought, only feeling, only longing and familiarity and hope.

Adam somehow found a way to recover from the explosion of a million tiny points of warm, blazing light in his head. He was the one to finally slow the kiss and reluctantly release it. But she stayed in his embrace, remembering what it was like when she knew without the slightest doubt that it was where she belonged.

"You're gonna give me a heart attack," he told her. She laughed again, softly, sweetly, almost like the old Jane, the one before... It was almost too much. "I'm not kidding." He pulled her hand up to his chest. "Feel." His heart crashed madly under her hand.

"Wow," she exclaimed softly.

"It was always like this. I can't look at you too long. I can't hold you too long before it feels like it's gonna rattle out of my chest." He let go of her now. He had to. "Love isn't just a _mental_ illness, you know. I mean, you've got all the synapses firing and all you can think about is when can I be next to her again?"

"How come we never talked about this before?"

"I didn't know how to tell you what I was feeling without scaring you away. Jane, every time we were together, I wanted you so bad I couldn't even make a fist."

"Well, that's..."

"It wasn't just sex. It was everything. All I wanted in this world was you. Even now, I can't figure out what I'm supposed to do without you."

"And you still went out and messed it all up." Joan couldn't keep the accusation out of her voice.

"Yeah, I did," Adam said bluntly.

"And you can't explain why?"

"I know you think it's a cop-out, but I didn't plan what happened," he told her yet again.

And she confirmed his assertion yet again. "You're right. It's a total cop-out. And if you sing that tune one more time, I swear I'm gonna dance to it."

"Fine. I'm just saying, you know, I didn't go out and concoct some scheme to get laid because you said no, OK? That's not how it was. She knew I was with you..."

"Didn't stop either of you, did it?" Joan said, unable to hide the sudden bitterness in her voice.

"That's the weirdest part. After we broke up, I ran into to her once. She told me that I was an asshole. She said she never really liked me that much anyway. She said it was all about you. She was, like, pathologically jealous of you or something. She watched us and she could tell we were having trouble. So she decided to give us a push in the wrong direction."

"She told you this?" Joan had to try hard to keep from gaping at him.

"Yeah," he simply said without elaborating.

"So she... what? Threw herself at you?"

"Kinda."

Joan couldn't take any more of this. She _had_ to interrupt him. "Adam, that's no excuse---"

"I know! I coulda walked away. I know that..." he acknowledged miserably. "I'm not trying to wiggle out of my part in this. I'm just trying to explain what happened. I thought you wanted to know."

"Yeah," she sighed wearily. She had always thought she wanted an explanation. But this was not what she had expected to hear. "I mean, I don't wanna know the gory details," she muttered.

"You think this is easy for me?" He looked down again, and then straight at Joan. "It's humiliating."

"And it's not humiliating for me to have to listen to it?"

He cringed when her voice took on even more of an edge of annoyance. "I know it is," he said plainly.

She took a moment to consider whether she really wanted to know whatever it was he was going to say. She didn't. Not really. But maybe it was time to get it all out in the open. "All right," she finally said, "go on, but you'll stop if I tell you to. And, please don't get gross."

He nodded and paused, looking for a place to start. "Getting her into Mrs. G's class was a mistake. She was always around, always talking at me. I didn't really get the vibe that she was into me so much as I just thought she was kinda lonely. I never saw her hanging out with anyone. A few days went by and I was in the art room after last class trying to do some work on our assignment before I had to go to the design studio. We were supposed to turn in a landscape and I was totally behind. It was really quiet and I was in the zone. I didn't even see her come in."

Joan shifted her weight uncomfortably, fearing what was next.

"She tried to start up a conversation but I told her I just needed a little time to myself. She said what she had in mind wouldn't take long... What happened next, I never would've predicted. The very first time she touched me, she felt my, uh..."

"Are you serious?" Joan's jaw dropped.

He nodded. "So... uh... Well, nobody ever did anything like that to me before. It... uh, I reacted."

"Oh," Joan said, getting the point quickly. "So she felt your boner and you just jumped her?" She didn't try to conceal the contempt in her voice. She couldn't believe what he was telling her.

"No! I tried to leave. But she..."

"What?"

"She..." He wasn't sure how to say it delicately, but he tried. "She went down..."

Joan felt like she'd been punched in the stomach. She had to turn around. She couldn't look at him anymore. She was already working hard to get that image out of her head. There were no words she could say to him that had any meaning. How could he?

How could he let that little freak...?

How?

Shit. He was a teenage boy with a hard-on. And someone eager to take care of it for him. How could he not?

"Jane," he said, his voice urgent, yet soft - like the sweet, gentle artist she knew. Not the hormonal horn-dog he'd become in her mind when she learned what he'd done. "I felt awful afterward," he added. "I swear."

"Afterward..." she repeated and let it hang there. "But you went back to her again, didn't you." It wasn't a question. Her sweet, gentle artist had left the building long ago.

Adam could feel the tears stinging in his eyes. Yes, he went back. And he still wished with every fiber of his being that he hadn't. "I hate myself for that. I ran into her after school a couple of days later. We went to her apartment. We didn't even talk."

He walked away from her and took a long, steadying breath. _What the hell?_ he thought. _Tell her everything._ "After what she did before, I didn't know what to expect. I was clumsy. It was over pretty fast. I was kind of embarrassed, so I left." He dared lift his head to meet Joan's gaze, not sure what he would find there. "That's all there was to it."

"Adam, you're not gonna make yourself the victim here." She was determined that he understand the damage he had done.

And he thought he did. "I'm not. I knew what I was doing was wrong."

"Then why?" Her gaze now bored into him desperately inquisitive, reluctantly accusing.

"I think on some level, I was trying to shake us up."

"Well," she chuckled sarcastically. "You succeeded fully."

"Yeah..." He stopped again. Joan watched him go into that really still space he occupied sometimes. What was she supposed to do with all of this? He came out of it maybe a minute later, and gathering what little resolve he had left, he said, "How did I become that guy?"

"What guy?" she asked.

"You know, that guy who treats girls like crap? I never meant to be like that. I mean, no girl ever gave me the time of day till you came along. I guess it kinda went to my head. And somehow I just used up everything any girl ever tried to give me and walked away. Nobody deserves that." He looked at Joan, then added, "Not even Bonnie."

Joan crossed her arms again and shook her head at him. "Now I'm supposed to care what Bonnie deserves?"

"I don't think she's a terrible person. She's just... really confused. Her parents are never around so she pretty much does whatever she wants. And it's like she thinks the only way she can get a guy to like her is to give it up---"

"Not my problem," Joan said harshly.

"I used her like a piece of meat, Jane," he admitted quietly. "I didn't think I was capable of something like that. Makes me sick."

She held a hand up at him. "Will you stop trying to make me feel sorry for Bonnie?"

"No, that's not what..." He trailed off, trying to find the right words. "I'm just trying to say that I know I've hurt everybody. But since it was about you all along, you got the worst of it. You were the one I took the most from. I took everything away from us."

"Un-challenged," she said pointedly.

He smiled at her jibe. "It's like for so long I was so wrapped up in my own stuff that I didn't even recognize how complicated other people's lives are and how I was making everything worse."

"You're right about that."

"How did I let it all get so screwed up?" He looked at her pleadingly but she only shrugged. "You know, I wonder sometimes if I hadn't given up waiting for you and started dating Iris, would that mean you and me might've gotten together sooner?"

That was an interesting thought. Joan had to stop and ponder it for a moment.

"Maybe the ripples would've been better," Adam whispered.

"Like how?"

"Well, maybe we would've had more time with each other before things started to get in the way. Maybe we would've talked about all the stuff we needed to talk about before it was too late."

"Yeah."

"And maybe I would've believed you about God when you needed me to," he added in that oh-so gentle voice of his.

Joan could not speak. Did that mean he believed her now? Still? After all she'd put him and everyone else through? Surely he was just trying to humor her. Would he say anything to win her back? She shook her head a little bit, wondering. What if he'd only pretended to change his mind after she told him it was all a delusion? What if he'd never stopped believing what he read in those books? She couldn't imagine that it could be so. "You've always been such a dreamer," she offered.

"I'm awake now," he answered flatly.

She looked at him squarely to find his alert, attentive eyes on her. She whispered, "That's good." _He is different,_ she thought. And it's not just the hair. Did he get taller, or was he just standing taller?

"I should've been more patient," he whispered, breaking her reverie. "I should've believed in you."

Ah, so he did stop believing. And it destroyed everything. "Wishful speculation in hindsight won't change anything," she told him, her voice sad, disappointed.

"Maybe not, but we're supposed to learn from our mistakes, right?"

She only nodded.

"I've been so consumed with you for so long... And sometimes it felt really great." He allowed a smile and just for a split second she thought she could see that old familiar twinkle he used to get when they were together and happy. "But it was tough this past year. We were always so stressed and going nuts about school and life stuff all the time. But then when we were alone, we just kept getting closer. And it kept getting harder to stop. Maybe it wouldn't have been so overwhelming if I didn't love you so much, but God, Jane..."

"I'm not made of stone, you know," Joan told him as she looked at him. "I felt it too... Adam, I always wanted you to be the one. It just wasn't time yet... It wasn't our time. Maybe I didn't have the right to ask, but I wanted you to wait for me."

"You could've told me that," he quietly said.

"Would it have made a difference?" Her voice was barely above a whisper now.

"Yes."

"I guess... I didn't know how to put it into words," she conceded.

He nodded. "Used to be no problem was so big that we couldn't get around it."

"We're growing up. The problems are getting bigger."

"But maybe they're not bigger than us... I'm not that lame little sad-sack you used to know."

"No. Now you're a... bigger sad-sack," she smiled, "with a great haircut."

He smiled back at her, feeling a little relived that she wasn't storming off, or telling him it was too late now. It was encouraging enough for him to ask, "You think if we try really hard, we can get around this problem, too?"

"How do I erase the ugly mental images? Which, by the way, you just made way worse with the details and the whole meat thing."

He had no idea. What she was seeing was very much like what he was feeling. Sullied. Shaken. But also stirred by a strange, impulsive, hopeful kiss. He certainly hadn't expected that. "I wish I knew," he said softly.

God, it was heartbreaking to watch him force out the words like that. Like he was afraid the mere wisp of his breath could shatter the world. Sometimes it could. He had just basically said that he hadn't given up wanting her. And that maddening kiss had indeed shattered Joan's denial. She still wanted him too. Someday. If the bad memories would only fade. "Even if I could somehow get past all that," she said, "I'm not sure we'd be any good together anymore."

"We could try." It was a desperate plea, even though he tried not to let it sound like one.

"And fail and get hurt again?" Because that was what Joan was most afraid of. Once bitten...

"Maybe it won't be like that."

"Why would I wanna take that chance?"

It was a fair question, one he could understand. But that kiss. That kiss was no accident. Wasn't she just as fervent as he was? Just as reluctant to let go? He sought out her eyes as he quietly asked, "Don't you miss me at all, Jane? Because I miss you kinda like I'd miss breathing."

She knew he was serious, but she couldn't help an amused smile before she said solemnly, "I miss you every day. But I haven't changed my mind. I'm still not ready to sleep with you. Well, even less ready now because I'll never sleep with someone I don't trust."

"I told you, I'm neutered."

"You didn't feel so neutered a couple of minutes ago."

Oops. He almost laughed.

"Could you really go back to being all frustrated like you were before, now that you've had sex?"

"Sex is just sex. I want more than that. I want the girl I love to know that she can trust me again."

"Trust is earned, Adam. It'll take time."

She didn't say it _could_ take time, or it _would_ take time, or it _might_ take time. She said it _**will** _take time. He smiled. "OK. No more rushing anything. Ever. I promise."

She hesitated, wondering what he thought she was agreeing to. Ah, what the hell? It was getting too hard to muster the energy to fight her intense, painfully complex connection to him. She was certain that God had forgiven him. Why couldn't she at least try? That was all he was asking. It wouldn't be easy or quick. But nothing ever had been with Adam. Why should this be any different? "OK," she said, finally.

"OK?" Had she just agreed to what he was so boldly hoping for?

"OK," she reiterated as if speaking to a child.

"OK..." He just looked at her, for too many long seconds.

"O-K," she finalized, stepping back behind the counter.

Before the silence could stretch into awkwardness again, he quickly said, "So, um... I should go. I'm supposed to be helping my dad with some stuff we have to do before we leave for Philly."

Joan's eyes met his as she said, "Hey, will you stop by the house and show me your tux before you have to return it?"

"Seriously?"

"Yeah... I had this daydream once..." She had to smile at the recollection.

A smile mirroring hers crept over his features as he said, "OK."

As she watched Adam leave the bookstore, she couldn't help imagining him looking all luscious in formal wear. That thought might just carry her through the rest of her otherwise ever so boring day.


End file.
